Insights & ArticlesA Study of our Vineyards
“The vision of the winemaker starts in the field.”
We have the great privilege of farming small select parcels across more than two dozen very special vineyard sites.
It takes time, working with a vineyard, to discover its defining characteristics. Then, it takes even longer to use the right winemaking techniques and sensitivity to highlight those features in the wine. A lightness of touch in our winemaking allows us to achieve a more complex, multi-dimensional, “effortless” quality in our wines.
Over two decades, we’ve gained access to some truly legendary sites. And we’ve achieved close personal relationships with our growers. Our shared respect for the land, our dedication to the work, and our mutual respect for each other, carry through to the final product. We work with good people and we’re going to make some amazing wines.
From first pruning through to the day of harvest, we’re out there farming the land in a way that draws out the singularity of each parcel. We minimize our footprint in the vineyard, stay very close to the “ingredients” and let the vineyards speak for themselves.
Insights & ArticlesReflections on Our 2018 Spring Release

After the historically low crop of 2015, the vines bounced back heartily to produce a normal-sized vintage of outstanding quality. The wines lead with delicious coastal Californian fruit front and center. Textures are generous and round, each wine layered and supple. The growing season itself was a relaxed affair, absent of any single defining event — neither frost, nor heat, nor untimely rain. Maybe that’s why the wines are so charming and harmonious, the quality so uniformly thrilling.
For our 21st release, we have elevated our selection for you and crafted a number of new Member-exclusive wines not available elsewhere — neither restaurants nor wine shops. Deep local knowledge and refined craftsmanship are at the core of this progression. We’ve been quietly conceiving these wines for several years.
First up, we have segregated our former Russian River Valley wines to focus on our favorite middle-ridge area for Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. This unique area — where elevation, soil type, fog intrusion and vine growth reach perfect equilibrium — I call the Highland Divide. These two new wines are evocative of this local district where we live and grow our best grapes. It’s one of those places where quality comes naturally and effortlessly. The vines are perfectly happy here!
Next, our Wild Mountainside Viognier and Syrah are natural partners, advancing our Rhone-style offerings into refined territory. These new bottlings evoke the highly eroded upland soils and unique microclimates we find on our volcanic coastal mountains. The greatest Viognier and Syrah wines worldwide always have a bit of wildness to them, a certain unruly nature, hard to tame. That’s what we have here — great quality, loaded with character. They’ll make a spectacular dinner double bill!
Lastly, we offer our latest bottling of Joy Road Pinot Noir, our brightest, most vibrant, naturally energetic Pinot. 2016 is our finest effort yet from this special high-density coastal vineyard located a short four miles from the Pacific.
I hope you enjoy these new bottlings as much as we enjoyed conceiving, growing and crafting them. We invite you to share your impressions with us.
— Andy Smith
Insights & ArticlesCultivating an Estate

“One of the greatest privileges for a winemaker is to plant a piece of land.”—Andy Smith
Around our eighth year of wine growing, we realized that to truly be a world-class wine producer we needed an estate property – an exceptional vineyard of our own that would bring gravitas and longevity to our winery. With extensive searching, in early 2004, we discovered a beautiful set of ridge top east-facing plateaus in the Green Valley area of the Russian River Valley – west of Highway 116 about 10 miles from the Pacific. What I loved about the land wasn’t only its ideal sun exposure and cooling from afternoon breezes and proximity to fog coming up from the southi. It was the site’s incredibly diverse soils – three signature soil types: Classic Goldridge sandy clay loam on the top plateau; very sandy, shallow soils with sandstone bedrock very close to the surface in the middle section; and iron-rich Altamont soil in the lower section. This was a unique parcel of land that we needed to develop in a very meaningful way.
We set about planting the vineyard in a manner that would allow us to really drill down into the site itself – really capitalize on these very distinctive soil compositions, each incredibly influential on the character of the fruit we were to growii. We chose to plant our favorite field clone selectionsiii along European vine density parameters. Instead of the typical 1,200 vines per acre planted in Northern California, we planted an extremely high density 3,630 vines per acre – perhaps the highest density site on the north coast. Farming such a high-density vineyard is incredibly labor intensive but yields exceptional fruit.
We had a vision for the finished wines as we planted the vineyardiv. It is imperative to develop a vineyard with a style in mind. This particular method of high-density planting forces the vines to delve deep into the soils. This keeps the vines very small and each vine produces a small number of clusters with small, very concentrated berries. Each vine focuses its energy on producing very intense flavors with nuance and detail, power and richness, depth balanced with a fresh, vibrant fruit character.
We’ve worked with our estate for more than 14 years now and have seen the vines settle into a beautiful equilibrium with the land. The wines have become more complex, harmonious and complete over time. Our continual evolution is a combination of the vines’ coming of age and the winemaker intimately knowing the land over time, understanding how the vines will respond season to season.
Our most recent estate wines are, perhaps, the finest wines I have ever crafted.